April 2007

I am still in shocked. Killin send me an SMS last night saying that Aunt Jenna had passed away and it seems like strings of bad news crawling up one by one to my surprise.

First, Nikki didn’t win the best music video award. I was actually quite disappointed with that. She lost out to Pete Teo’s Made in America. Well, at least it’s Pete Teo and I do agree that his music video deserved the win.

Second

“Man U came from behind 0-2 to be beat Everton 4-2. Chelsea drew with Bolton 2-2”

That’s really not good news at all. Premiership is a wrap. There’s no way Chelsea can close the 5 points deficit in 3 games. Still have another two to fight for and hopefully next season will be better

Third, no reply. Let’s not discuss it to details. I’m not in the mood

Aunt Jenna’s death was a big shock to the family. She doesn’t seem to be sick when I last saw her and that was a couple of weeks ago, she was looking great. I was taken aback, thinking of how vulnerable life can be. You might not know when your turn will be.

There were some points of my life where I realized that I don’t even know what I want. I don’t know what I want to be, what I want to do and I don’t even know what to think of? Sometimes when decision was made, it somehow always ends up being in the opposite direction of what I want, what I desired the most. It often leads to disappointments. It’s a walking contradiction. Not to say that my life is somewhat you might think as a total wreck but to think of it, I think it was not that bad at all. Well, depends on how you look at it. Call it miserable, because I wandered far or maybe nomad or vagabond, call me what you will.

I often asked myself what’s the purpose of life? What’s this life for? Is it to live is to die and to die is to live? I’m not quite sure of what the hell am I saying here but there’s one thing for sure, life is so full of surprises. I just love this phrase “Life is Like a Box of Chocolate”. I bet most of you know that phrase. Well in a sense, I’d like to think that life has a lot more to offer and yes that’s true and what amuses me about life is that often I was so anxious to know what will happen the next few seconds, or minutes or hours or days, weeks, months, years, decades and the list goes on. I only missed out on centuries I guess. But it’s not really important anyway.

Most of the time we just don’t know why is that we are still standing waiting, doesn’t have a clue of what we are waiting for and in the end we got sick of wasting energy and then try the best possible way to find the back door. Normal. I mean it’s a matter of choice that we are talking about. The day we were born, theatrically we were born free and that is our privilege. I might sound like it came from bittersweet frustrations that were piled up forging a decent amount of hate and misery. Look at the world today. That justifies what had been happening all this while.

No matter what happen, how bad things goes, I’m happy to know that I have someone to turn to even if my whole world is like trembling down and everything seems to hopeless. I know that the Almighty will always be watching me from above and make the very best happened. Things happened for some reason, we might not know why but as far as I know, I believe that He had great plans for you and me, for us and for all.

Just like a star shine beyond night time I know you’re there shining your blessings upon me.

To Aunt Jenna,

“The Lord is my Shepard; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me besides the still water. He restores my soul; He leads me in the path of righteousness For His name’s sake”

Ok, now it’s time to educate you guys a little bit on Bahasa Melayu Sarawak. It’s slightly different in terms of usage and also pronunciation. I will guide you through the process. Ok, usually when we start picking up languages, curses and swear words are something that we can catch up easily. So, in conjunction with the Visit Malaysia Year 2007, I decided to educate you guys with some simple swear words, easy ones of course. It won’t be that much of a tongue twister.

Translation : You bastard! What the fuck you think you doing there, whoring ah?

Bangkai / bunk-khy / noun

1. decomposed body : Buang gik bangkai asuk ya! Bau kali juak.

Translation : Throw away the dead dog, it’s fucking smelly.

2. to irritate somebody by calling them names : Bangkai juak ko tok!

Translation : Ermm .. shit, what ah? You bangkai!

Perut / per-root / noun

1. stomach

Baya / bar-ya / noun – iban

1. a large predatory semi aquatic reptile with long jaws, long tail, short legs and a horny textured skin (crocodile) : non swear sentence in iban

anang mandi ba batu anchau ari ili sungai nyin, empa baya legi

Translation : don’t go and bath upstream at the rocky part of the river, later crocodile will eat you!

It might be a little bit similar with Malay in a sense but with Malays you can’t combined these words to form a sentence. In Bahasa Melayu Sarawak, you can combine these few words and form a magnificent curse that can leave somebody speechless. It doesn’t have any specific meaning but you can try and have fun with it. Say it like this :

CILAKA BABI BANGSAT BANGKAI PERUT BAYA!

Chee-la-kha bar-bee bunk-sart bunk-khy per-root bar-ya!

It’s like saying :

You crazy son of a bitch fucking melodramatic heretic lunatic smashing pumpkins moron!

I went for an interview the other day with a plywood company. The post that I applied for was Logistics Assistant. It was quite a drive from my house to the place where I will be interviewed which is the main office. The place itself is situated at the Industrial estate at about almost 25 KM from town. My interview was scheduled to be at 2:00 PM.

It was not until 4:00 PM that I got the chance to be interviewed. There were 21 applicants altogether but only I think at about 12 applicants turned up for the interview. I was applicant number 8. After almost 2 hours of shivering in the conference room I was finally called to the director’s office.

There was a young man in the room, I think in about his late 20’s around 27-29 most probably. He introduced himself as Jason and asked me to sit down and get on with the interview.

The first question he asked me was whether I am comfortable with English or Bahasa Melayu. I answered straight away, English. He smiled and said that I am actually the first English speaking candidate of the day. I don’t know whether I should be happy with that or not but I gave him a smile.

I was set to be focused on talking about issues related to logistics as I applied for that particular post. One of the first few question s that he asked me was that, when I heard the word SY Plywood, what kind of a job that I expect or what kind of working environment that I have in mind. So I told him, since this is a plywood company and I applied for a job in the logistics department I’d expected that I would be working both on site which is in the factory and also in the office.

I told him that my job would be something involving transportations, shipping, scheduling and some part of it would be keeping an eye on the machineries as in keeping stocks of what type of spare parts we have and those that we don’t have. I was trying my very best to answer the question even though to be honest I have no experience in handling logistics as in working per say. The only experience that I have which was close might be a little bit far from close was when I was appointed as the technical and special tasks exco for my University Camp.

Then he said:

“What if I were to put you in the engineering department?”

I thought, is he joking? I don’t come from an engineering school and not that I have any engineering background either. The closest that I have to that might be when I was in my secondary school taking KHB (Kemahiran Hidup Bersepadu) which I did miserably well enough to get A.

“I’m sorry sir but I don’t even have an engineering background”

He smiled and answered

“My friend, a degree is just a kick start for your career. It’s for a little bit of acceleration to looks for jobs. I tell you one thing, if I were to put you and mechanical engineering student in the factory right now, both of you will start at 0, I can assure you that none of you will be able to handle it. So what I’m saying is it doesn’t really matter. You don’t have a background, fine we will train you. It’s whether you want to do it or not”

Well, it might sound convincing or not so convincingly voiced but at least he got saying these little things in my head that I’ll think about it. But one thing that really makes me saying I have to think twice about this job is the working hours.

Dee: That’s human rights violation, work like a dog, get paid really low and tell you what, it does sounds like a very typical china man company. If you get any other job offers after few months, cabut la. I also don’t work like that. Welcome to the world of slavery in advance! Ha ha ha!

Chee beh ..

And I’d like each and everyone to remember this day as it marked the 1st annivarsary of our dear friend Eric John was call to the Lord :

In Loving Memory of Eric John (1984-2006)

Eric was a hero. He was a Brother. He was a liberal. He was a patriot. He was a friend. And He always will be. With Eric’s death we have lost someone we hold dear. What He has left behind we will hold dearer still. May God bless his soul.

I woke up earlier today despite sleeping relatively late last night. Not that I was watching the Blackburn v Chelsea match. I was playing riddles with a couple of friends. I switched on my laptop and put on my morning tunes. Music is my breakfast. I just can’t live without them. It’s like a never ending serenading sound in my ears. 🙂 I prefer something not so heavy in the morning so my choices are:

I know it’s a bit long but you know la, after I woke up I put on my headphone and then I go to bed again. And of course before that I will send out some morning sms 🙂 A Blue Monday. 🙂 Wake me up when breakfast is ready ya! Can you hear the CHELSEA sing?

As everyone is keeping themselves busy with work and exams, I on the other hand am trying to keep myself busy with my writings. Somehow I think I’m very much at ease with what I am doing now; watching and observing what’s happening around me and try to put what I saw into words, which is exactly what I am doing now.

Grandma just came yesterday and will probably stay for a couple of days or so. Occasionally granny will be here every 2-3 months, depends on her medical appointment. She prefers to be sent to Bintulu instead of Miri. Well, basically because she got vast choices of places to stay. She sometimes will be at Uncle Nick’s place which is just a few blocks away from my house.

I’m keeping myself awake for the Valencia VS Chelsea clash at the Maestalla. Well, I still have another 4 hours to wait. I was thinking of going to bed earlier just now but then I just have so many things in my head that I would like to write.

I do hope that Chelsea will go through despite the uphill task that Chelsea will have to face in Valencia. My verdict, it will be a draw. Even so, I do hope that the result is in our favor. 1-1 seems to be a safe bet on the game. I’d very happy if we win the game tonight.

Whoever wins this tie will definitely face Rafa Benitez’s side in the next round. Well, Valencia used to be Rafa’s playground. He won the Champions League and The Primera Liga during his spell at Maestalla. I guess Liverpool is progressing tremendously well in Europe despite a not so convincing performances in the league, still they posses a big threat and one of the favourites to lift the cup in Athens next month.

Let’s just skip away from football just for a little while. Mel sent me an SMS this evening:

Thanks for the super convincing encouragement. Oh! Boy. I’ve not been going for workout sessions for God knows how long. I hope it’s not a program where I have to do a lot of running and climbing. I had an experience once, which I told myself, I won’t do it again. That was back a few years ago when I went for this Gunung Nuang expedition. That was one hell of an expedition man. It took us 12 hours to reach the peak and the next day, I can’t even walk. Despite the pain and sufferings, I still managed to go to the National Museum a day after, a trip that I told myself that I would never miss. You want to know why? Hot chicks were all there, I mean with the trip. I brave it all away. Those were the days.

I’m off to bed now; I’ll see you again after the game. Good night!

Wednesday, 11 April 2007, 04:56

I can’t help but to blog about this. Against all odds, Chelsea Football Club has done it again. The quadruple is still very much within reach. Chelsea edged mighty Valencia 2-1 at La Maestalla thanks to second half goals by Andriy Shevchenko and Michael Essien that made up for what a great week for The Blues.

I can’t help but to feel so much excited about the win. We are through to the next round of the most elite European Football Club Competition of all time, The EUFA Champions League. Chelsea are through for the 3rd time that I can remember or maybe 2nd. I remember that we were beaten in the semis by our possible opposition in the next round, Liverpool 1-0 by a freak Luis Garcia strike at Anfield.

Chelsea put on a very patient style of play in the first half, a very typical boring way of Chelsea play I must say but somehow we managed to be in control of the game by having 61% in terms of possession of the ball. That stats somehow didn’t really reflect the score line at half time, Valencia was leading by a goal to nil thanks to a marvelous tap in from close range by the same man who knocked Chelsea out at the same stage back a few years ago (I’m too lazy to do my research), Fernando Morientes. Back then he was on loan from Real Madrid, playing for Monaco.

Mourinho made some changes in the 2nd half line-up; Joe Cole came in for the makeshift right back, Lasanna Diarra. Essien who has playing wide on the right was then being stuffed at the right wing-back position to make way for Joe Cole. It proved to be a turning to the game because for the next 45 minutes, Joe Cole has been giving Asier Del Horno (former Chelsea left back, sold to Valencia after a season) a torrid time on the right side but not only him was having a hard time, the same goes to Morretti and the ageing Ayala.

Essien got his magical touch on both of Chelsea’s goal. His confusing cross led to Chelsea’s comeback providing Shevchenko into lashing a powerful strike from three yards a goal mouth scramble and his wonderful strike in the dying minutes of the second half that ensure Chelsea are safe through to the semis marked his comeback after missing the last couple of matches due to injury. His performance tonight was worth every dime Chelsea spent to bring him from Lyon. A brilliant display and it seems to me that he can still play for another 90 minutes so to speak.

Valencia never really looked like scoring in the 2nd half but there was one decent chance that Angulo should’ve done better. Joe Cole’s introduction and Quique Sanchez’ decision to relegate Morientes to the bench proved to be the turning point of the game. After Morientes was taken out, Valencia was left with no out and out striker upfront. That gave Chelsea a little breather at the back despite potent threat on from Joaquin on the right flank.

Meanwhile Manchester United finally get their act together by walloping AS Roma 7-1 and went through the next round with 8-3 on aggregate. Braces from Michael Carrick, Christiano Ronaldo and a goal a piece from Alan Smith, Wayne Rooney and Patrice Evra completed the mauling of the Romans at the Theatre of Dreams. Somehow the phrase from the movie 300 came to mind, “Tonight We Dine in Hell!!” It sounded so sad to be true for Roma but I was happy that we’ll be seeing more English side in the next round. My verdict, Man United will face Bayern Munich in the semis. Bayern would very much like to avenge their 2-1 defeat in 1998. I guess this is just enough for the day. We’ll be seeing Liverpool end of this month as long as Liverpool not being battered 4-0 or 5-0 by PSV tomorrow, which is unlikely of course and it will be one hell of a family battle; Dad VS me. I just can’t wait. Bring them on.